Wires

I noticed the sky, all those bruised-smudge clouds, on my way to see Godzilla. I only had minutes but took a slight detour as I realised that the colours would work as a backdrop for something I'd clocked before: the overhead wires near the Dún Laoghaire DART station (how's that for nerdy?).

Here's a short review of Godzilla (with a spoiler at the end):

I was prepared to enjoy it, despite reading some sniffy reviews (hey, it's a monster movie, get over it). But, but... Despite a promising beginning, it (at one point literally) goes off the rails before it's a quarter way through. It is not quite as dire as the apocalypse movie 2012, whose most accurate review was Dara Ó Briain's piss-take, but that's a long way from a thumb's up. It might have worked as a 20 minute series of set-pieces: some gorgeous Tokyo skylines, a good monster-induced tsunami and various scary glimpses, including a superb military-parachute jump through doomsday clouds, etc. Unfortunately the film is longer than 20 minutes and becomes repetitive very quickly. It isn't helped by a script that might have been written on the back of a napkin during a coffee break, a soundtrack that is OTT sinister/brooding then sniveling-romantic then charge-of-the-Light-Brigade triumphant, then all those again in a different order, then again and again... Because the movie keeps changing gear. It has no idea what it wants to be, apart from an extended recruitment ad for the US Army. And despite serious people (scientists and military folk) having to spout monster-movie dialogue ('Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism, or MUTO for short') the movie is utterly devoid of humour. To sum up (it doesn't really deserve a spoiler alert): the romantic leads with the cute kid manage to get separated then reunited, a few cities get trampled to rubble and eventually Godzilla emerges as the good guy and trounces the other two monsters (sorry MUTOs) then wanders back to sea like a slightly punch-drunk, amphibious Rocky.

Earlier, I had gone to the docks, where I was confronted by the great white wall of a cruise ship. People were still boarding and I wandered about a bit till I noticed a man in a bath robe leaning out from his balcony-slot. I waved to him, to show I was friendly, and he waved back. It's the season for cruise ships in these parts, and Dublin is apparently a popular port of call. I can kind of see the attraction, especially if you're wealthy and elderly or slothfully middle-aged: to be afloat and going places, weighing anchor at various clanking, industrial, pigeon-haunted ports yet safely becalmed and insulated as a ship in a bottle, out of reach of demanding relatives and children with grown-up problems, everything catered for and the rest set aside, bar (for those who are romantically inclined), a bit of late honeymooning or Autumnal flirting. and all around you the cleared, shining, conference table of the sea.